I’ve been working on my photography skills over the last year and a bit, getting better at settings, and angles, and playing with new things. I still get 1 decent image for every 25 I take, but hey, practice makes perfect (or at least, a little bit better…).
The Wellington historical sewist have been letting me practice on them every time we do a dress up event. There was lots of practicing at our 2019 Sew & Eat Historical Retreat. (Practicing does include me setting all the functions and handing the camera over to someone else).
I’m still most comfortable with ‘people stand perfectly still and pose photos’:
But once you’ve done those, and the obligatory ‘smell the flowers and look into the river’ photos…
And pretend to push each other into the river…
Then you have to get more creative!
So I taught the ladies how to play the plantain game.
It’s a shooting game you play with plantain grass heads. My first memory of playing it is with my family outside one of the cabins in Haleakala Crater. The goal of that particular game was to hit a nene goose with your grass head. It’s definitely the only kind of shooting of nene geese that’s allowed!
Here are two videos of how you do it:
I taught Nina:
And she taught everyone else while I took photos:
And it was a great success, because I got all of these, completely unposed!
Best of all we had a great time, and have lovely memories of a sunny morning by the river…
What a great idea. The candid shots did work out better. Nice job.
Years ago in an art photography course at university, we were told to take 10 rolls of film to get one or two good prints and each roll of film were usually 24 or 36/roll. So, 25 for 1 is quite good.
Thank you! I suspect my standards of ‘good enough to use’ aren’t quite the same as ‘good enough to print’, but I’m still pleased with how I’m improving!
What a pretty place, your pictures capture a romantic idyllic quality. The “plantain game” reminds me of a similar past time here on the US east coast, trying to think of what the plant is called……something other than plantain of course.
ceci
Thank you! It was a lovely spot, and such a fun place to hang out. Plantain grass grows on the US East Coast, so that’s probably what you used 🙂
I grew up near Washington, D. C., and as kids we played this game! I don’t know that we called it anything. But the plants were whatever variety of plantain we have here.
I think kids everywhere figured out how to play this! It’s so simple, but fun. And a good mix of luck and skill.
Can joy be a quiet emotion? Seems like your photos are proof that the two indeed can exist together. What fun.
Yes it can!